Thursday, March 27, 2008

On many of our pages, more than 10 percent of our visitors click through to the advertisers for more information," because ads are very relevant for visitors.

HomeTips now sees more than 1 million online visitors each month. "Solid content is the secret to developing a following," says Vandervort. "If you write expert content with your visitor's needs in mind, the rest will follow."

n November of 2000, when he was just 14 years old, Igor Sushko founded AutomotiveForums.com because of his enthusiasm for cars and desire to spread knowledge to others. Today, the site receives about 950,000 unique visitors each month on more than 1,000 forums. There, car buffs can discuss virtually any car make and model with more than 150 expert moderators and thousands of other enthusiasts. Membership growth has maintained its steady pace and is nearing 500,000 worldwide.

In August 2003, he began running Google AdSenseTM ads throughout the site. In addition to AdSense ads, Sushko expanded his options by trying other contextual advertising networks.

"AdSense ads are extremely well targeted and non-invasive to my visitors," says Sushko. "They’re more like supplementary content than ads, which makes them useful for visitors."

"AdSense is a win-win for all entities," he says. "It adds value to my website, and not just from a revenue standpoint. The ads are also useful for visitors."

Erin Billy moved to San Francisco in 1997, and continued his passion for teaching through a web-based business, TestMagic.com. Today he offers online and offline classes in San Francisco for those applying to American universities and colleges. He also offers preparation courses and reference guides for high-level tests, including the GMAT, SAT, and GRE.

After losing money on the website for the first couple of years, Billy says he made a small profit by the third year. Three years after that, he has two full-time employees on the payroll, and contracts with five teachers for classroom training. Now his challenge is to grow the business and make it more profitable. Currently, he gets about 60,000 daily page views from 3,000 unique visitors. To make money from that traffic, he has tried a variety of advertising strategies. "I've tried most of the media types I can think of," he says.

He incorporated AdSense on virtually all of the site's pages.

Results

"Good advertising gives people more options, more information," Billy says. "And text ads are my all-around favorites," adding that, "It's great that Google chooses the best combination of relevance and high-paying ads." Now he gets "very impressive" AdSense revenue – about four times what he typically gets from all affiliate programs and ad networks combined. Billy invests this additional income in TestMagic to give his users more of what they want. "I can now afford to outsource some technical and creative work that I previously had to do myself. The ad revenue helps me speed things up."

Billy believes that AdSense revenue "has infused small publishers and webmasters like me with cash they could never have had before." And he continues, "I honestly believe that AdSense is helping users in a ‘second wave' of the Internet. It's a great equalizer, enabling people like me with a lot of knowledge and a useful service, but not much financial backing, to build a business that makes money." So when associates ask, Billy's advice is "start using AdSense right away."

Based in San Francisco, Haughey has been a website developer, designer, and publisher for years, and is an active blogger as well. One of his blog sites, PVRBlog.com, is all about personal video recorders (PVRs), especially the TiVo® brand. Nearly a year ago Haughey began posting messages about this growing consumer electronics category, including notes on TiVo features, shortcuts, new models, reviews, hacks, and PVR industry news.

While Haughey didn't intend for PVRBlog to become a business, its popularity grew - up to 5,000 people read it every day - and he wondered if there was a way to cover costs for hosting and storage. He tried adsense.

"I can't believe how lucrative AdSense is," Haughey says. "On the very first day it was on, I made twice what it costs me for monthly hosting, storage, and bandwidth overage fees," adding that he's making money because the ads are relevant and readable. "The targeting is perfect for me," he says. Since PVRBlog is about a product, he gets a lot of traffic from searchers. "People are constantly looking for TiVo and PVR products and services. I'm lucky to have a blog that is product focused, because the ads all relate to PVR products and services."

"I encourage people who can write and have active blogs dedicated to a single subject to support them through AdSense ads," he says. "It's definitely lucrative, and you can concentrate on your subject and your site." In particular, he feels the program is "really great for bloggers who worry about the wrong kind of commercialism creeping in, because AdSense ads really work in the context of blog pages."

on April 18 and 19, the Manipal Media Students’ Convention 2008 (MMSC ’08).

What is MMSC? MMSC is a formal Convention - the first and only venture of this kind in India. The foremost aim of this Convention is to bridge the gap between the Industry and the Individual. It will act as a platform for creating awareness and encouraging debate about various aspects of the Media.

Why Media? Well, we live in a very fast world, an ‘information obsessed society’, so to say. In today’s world, it is extremely important to understand this crucial tool, which shapes – and sometimes transforms – the society.

This Year’s Convention… A very wise guy called Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is Power”. Taking off from there, the Internet is a Nuclear Arsenal in the hands of today’s generation! In the years to come, the Internet and New Media will definitely make a huge difference to the way we perceive society. Solely for this reason, the theme of the first edition of the Convention – MMSC ’08 – is ‘Communication through the World Wide Web’. Participants and the guest speakers will discuss and debate about innovations like Blogging, Podcasting, Social Networking…

Manipal Bloggers’ Meet Ladies and Gentlemen, behold - The Manipal Bloggers’ Meet (MBM)! The first ever Bloggers’ Meet in Manipal, the MBM is open to ALL Bloggers in and around Manipal, irrespective of their background. It is also open to people who will be in Manipal on the designated date.

The Media Council The Media Council is the dream of veteran journalist & honorary director of MIC, Dr. MV Kamath. The Media Council is to be a national body fostering the confluence of various mainstream media. MMSC will be the foundation for the same.

MMSC will be the impetus required to encourage & appreciate the inter-disciplinary spectrum of media. It is a long term goal to create & sustain a growing group of aware & responsible media personnel under the umbrella of the Media Council. Annual MMSCs will help propagate this desired awareness regarding every major section of media.

DescriptionIndi-Bloggers reunite again, in Mumbai, on April 20th (Sunday), 2008. Indibloggers to make this a huge hit, and draw in bloggers from all over the country! Indiblogger's had some excellent press recently, so they want to capitalize on that to see where they should collectively take this. So spread the good word, invite your friends, and let's make a LOUD NOISE!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

A tug of war over the future of media may be brewing between so-called user-generated content -- including amateurs who produce blogs, video and audio for public consumption -- and professional journalists, movie makers and record labels, along with the deep-pocketed companies that back them. The ultimate outcome, suggest experts at Wharton, will be a hybrid approach that features entirely new business models.

Joel Waldfogel is Wharton business and public policy professor, and Kendall Whitehouse is senior director of IT at Wharton,

Whitehouse distinguishes professional content on the basis of its editorial process. "Carefully checked sources and consistent editorial guidelines are key differences between most professional and amateur content," he suggests, while noting that, "Both bring value. The latter brings quickness and a personal viewpoint and the former provides analysis and consistent quality. The world I want to live in includes healthy doses of both categories."

Waldfogel notes that even amateurs will face business model challenges as their content evolves. "What are the real economics of putting out something that's worth watching?" asks Waldfogel. "Producing a blog that anybody wants to read is hard. To get content that people want to see requires investment."

Whitehouse agrees, and sees a hybrid approach emerging that embraces both professional and amateur content.

How do I delete comments?You can delete any comment that you create on anyone else's blog, as long as you signed in to your Google Account when you left the comment. You can also delete any comments (registered or anonymous) that are left on your own blog, or on another blog for which you have admin privileges.

To delete a comment, first make sure that you are logged in to the correct Blogger account (administrator of the blog or author of the comment). Then go to the blog and find the page where the comment is listed. Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon.

Click the trash can and you will see this confirmation page, which also lists the comment for review:

Clicking the "Delete Comment" button will remove the text of the comment from your page, but leave the author's name and a message saying "this comment has been removed."

If you check the "Remove Forever" option, then no trace of the comment will remain on your blog.

Notes:

If you can't see the trash can icon, then that is probably because of a caching issue with your browser. First double check that you are logged in to the correct Blogger account. Then clear your browser's cache and refresh the comment page a few times, until the icon appears. Alternatively, you could try deleting the comment from a different browser. If you have a firewall or other security software (e.g. Norton AntiVirus) on your computer, then this could also be causing the icons to be hidden. Try temporarily disabling this software or modifying its settings to delete your comments. Once a comment has been deleted, there is no way to recover it. It is not possible to edit comments. If you want to edit your own comment, you can simply delete it and then re-enter it with the changes. (However, the timestamp will be modified to reflect the time of the new comment.)

For visual learners who don't have the patience to browse our help articles, blogger help team created the new Blogger Help YouTube Channel. There you can find videos that show you step by step how to use Blogger features.

My site has been up for about a month and a half and I will most likely reach the $100 total mark today.

I am now averaging about $3.50 a day from an average of less than 1000 visitors a day.

Some comments:i think there is more potential in your site m8, there is more to be earned then 3.5$ a day from 1000 uniques. but still congrats . keep it up

Define normal? The problem is each site is different in the way it is setup and the flow of traffic. Your visitors may not be as inclined to visit the advertisers on your pages as another sites traffic is or you may be extremely higher than another similar site. Take a look at your ads and see if they are blended well and if they are relevant to your site. If you are getting that amount per day then it may be normal for your type of site. I have sites that receive 0.4% ctr and others that are around 4% and are in the same industry. What makes one successful may not make another one the same way due to different types of visitors.

Allthough you might look at putting YPN on your site if you can do this. They tend to pay more in certain niche categories and may be a good and profitable move for you as long as you are from the U.S. I have sites that are similar in traffic to yours and had adsense on them and was making around $10 or less per day and made the switch to YPN and now they do around $20 to $30 per day. That is something you might look at also.

to signup go to publisher.yahoo.com and you will find the info there for the program.

How to Build a Somewhat Successful Blog: 16 Lessons I Have LearnedPublished September 24th, 2007 in Personal Development. This blog has almost 4000 subscribers via RSS and email and a few thousand visitors a day.

It’s the 4176:th most popular blog according to Technorati.

It has over 150 posts and over 800 comments from readers.

After a year of blogging I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

And over these last 12 months I’ve learned a thing or 16 about blogging.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Seo Elite is the new software that claims to be able to boost your website traffic to over 15,000 visitors per day using only free search engine traffic.As most marketers will be aware, getting traffic to your website is a constant and demanding job, unless of course you are ranked top in the search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and let’s face it most of us are not at the top or anywhere near it. Seo Elite claims to be able to rectify this problem, boosting not only your traffic and ranking statistics but the sale of your products as well.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

With GrandCentral, a free service from Google, you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. Though GrandCentral is currently in a private beta test, bloggers can skip the wait and get a free account immediately. Sign up now

You can screen calls, either accepting them or sending them to voicemail, and you can even block unwanted callers altogether. Learn how to add a WebCall button to your blog, and try it out for yourself

Monday, March 10, 2008

The latest from Blogger BuzzBlogger Party at SXSW: Sunday, 9:30–2:00 at Club de VilleMarch 7, 2008 — Going to be in Austin for this year’s South by Southwest festival? That makes several of us!

Blogger is once again rocking it out at Club de Ville [map] with delicious snacks, an open bar, Blogger Play, and our SXSW staple: climate-inappropriate schwag.

The party starts at 9:30PM this Sunday and goes until 2AM on Monday.

You’ll need an invitation to get in the door. Members of the Blogger team will be at the Interactive conference, so just stop anyone you see wearing a Blogger logo and ask. If it’s one of us, you’ll get an invitation. If it’s someone else, you’ll still make a new Blogger-loving friend.

Want more drinking on Google’s dime? Come to these parties:

Google PartyLight Bar [map]Saturday, 6PM–8PM(This would be a pretty sure place to find invitations to the Blogger party as well.)

Thursday, March 6, 2008

IndiBlogger.in and Balaji brings Hyderabad bloggers together in an event sponsored by Microsoft

More than 75 avid bloggers meet at the Microsoft Office

(IndiaPRwire.com)

Post the phenomenal success of the recently concluded blogger meet in Banglore, IndiBlogger.in conducted the second meet in the series at the Microsoft India Development Center, Gachibowli, Hyderabad on March 1, 2008. These blogger meets are being held in association with Microsoft. Over 75 avid bloggers from Hyderabad attended this one of a kind initiative which was held on Saturday from 4 pm onwards.

IndiBlogger.in was started by Renie Ravin, a web architect from Chennai and he is joined by a team of bloggers from Bangalore and Chennai. "Most bloggers don't realize the responsibility that lies on their shoulders, that they are a highly influential media on the internet today. With a little bit of collective thinking, bloggers have the potential to tackle various issues that plague our society. The Bangalore meeting was the test for us and we achieved our objectives of making the meeting both meaningful and fun. This has spurred us on," said, Mr. Renie Ravin.

Sudeep D’Souza, a Hyderabad blogger who’s claim to fame is a guest post on ProBlogger .net has this to say about the Hyderabad meet: “we quickly realized that there was a good mix from students to business men from the young to the middle aged, bloggers with varied interests from mosquitoes to psychology to recruiters to people who blog about everything and anything. It was a wonderfully funny and interesting session.” The Bangalore meet also received raving reviews on several well established blogs. A snippet from Sandil's post on Mutiny.in- "I must say, I've never been to a more enjoyable blogger meet ever, and no, it wasn't because of the pizzas." "The crowd was super, totally my-kinda like-minded folks. I guess the caption on the T-shirts pretty much summed it up. We blog, therefore we are."

Launched in September 2007, IndiBlogger.in has over 1700 blogs registered in the directory, with the number of submissions from bloggers increasing everyday. The website helps you find bloggers by name, city or user-generated tags (keywords). Members can organize local blogger meetings by coordinating with other bloggers in the directory. Every member in their network needs to be approved first, as cleverly outlined on their blog - "We've also added new submission guidelines for IndiBlogger, since we had many discussion forums trying to pass themselves off as blogs. Needless to say, their thinly veiled disguises failed to bypass our high-tech blog validation algorithms (our moderators)."

IndiBlogger.in has received many positive reviews from reputed websites like killerstartups.com, webyantra.net and eindiareview.com. Excerpt from eIndiaReview: "It's hard to set your site apart in a growing commodity-like space, but IndiBlogger does a good job of being distinct." Amit of Webyantra says: "They have this really cool idea about blogs badges, which denote blogs belonging to a particular genre (coder, chef, writer, gamer, biker etc) and the badges are real eye-candy stuff."